MIT Blackjack King Takes SMTP Public

An anonymous reader writes "Semyon Dukach is at it again. Thumbing his nose at the establishment, that is. Dukach, a former leader of the MIT blackjack team, has taken his small company, SMTP, public today in the hopes of overturning the field of e-mail delivery and management. SMTP might sound boring, but it's the latest vehicle in Dukach's quest to 'make a couple billion and then try to help the world' (without the aid of venture capitalists or investment bankers). Given his track record, people might not want to bet against him."

Comments

Blackjack team?

[rossdee]

Do they go around casinos with concealed computers counting the cards and winning more than the house would like?

Re:Blackjack team?

[matunos]

I hope not, because that could land them in prison.

Re:Blackjack team?

[slodan]

Yes.

Re:Blackjack team?

[Archangel Michael]

The computers were concealed in their heads. They counted cards, and did the math in their heads. It is fairly easy if you have the discipline.

Re:Blackjack team?

[HungryHobo]

no need for the computers if you have the discipline and without the computers card counting is 100% perfectly legal.

the house can still kick you out and refuse to let you gamble with the if you win too much though.

Re:Blackjack team?

[Splab]

You have obviously never tried.

It is extremely difficult to get right, which is why a lot of casinos actually encourage you to do it - provided you aren't good at it. The local casinos even gives you a booklet which explains the perfect game; it's good business since most players (as you write) will tend to bias their play on how much money is at stake and their gut feeling.

Re:Blackjack team?

[Geoffrey.landis]

The computers were concealed in their heads. They counted cards, and did the math in their heads. It is fairly easy if you have the discipline.

The MIT card-counting team was the book Bringing Down the House (the one they made the movie of). Semyon Dukach was not in that book, but in the following Ben Mezrich book, Breaking Vegas, which had a more sophisticated (and harder to accomplish) set of techniques.

Re:Blackjack team?

[0100010001010011]

Wired had a nice bit on it: Hacking Las Vegas (Written by Ben Mezrich, I think it may be an excerpt from his book).

Or if you want a Hollywood Bastardization (Based on the True Story) there's 21

At the time, the casinos made it easy to stay liquid. This was before the era of the CTR — the cash transaction report — which obligates the casinos to report any transaction greater than $10,000. "In the old days," Tay explains, "you'd win a quarter-million dollars, and they'd give it to you in cash. On New Year's 1996, I walked from the Mirage to the MGM Grand with a paper New Year's hat filled with $180,000." Back in Boston, Lewis and his friends kept the money in cash, declaring the winnings in the "other" category on their IRS forms. "You'd find $100 bills all over my apartment. Dig in my laundry, there would be $100,000 under my socks."

Re:Blackjack team?

[overlordofmu]

My apologies if my understanding of their method is incorrect. My problem with their method (as I understood it) is that a person making low bets counted the cards and then called in a high roller when they knew the deck was stacked in the player's favor. That is not simply counting cards (which I whole-heartedly support), that is counting cards and then relaying that information to an accomplice that has been exposed to zero risk in the accumulation of the data (zero risk because they were not betting). It is the relaying the accumulated data to an accomplice that is unehtical. But gambling itself is a immoral enterprise that involves fooling fools for profit.

"On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero."

"On a long enough time line, the win rate for everyone drops to zero."

Re:Blackjack team?

[paiute]

From what I have heard of Ben Mezrich's liberal reimaging of reality, I would take any account by him with big error bars.

Re:Blackjack team?

[Unequivocal]

I read the book describing their method (bringing down the house) and I think you've accurately described it, fwiw.

Re:Blackjack team?

[Anonymous Coward]

Counting is nearly impossible in most of the larger casinos now because they use a 6 deck constant shuffler. They don't just go straight through a stack of cards anymore. Many of the smaller ones still use a standard stack though.

Re:Blackjack team?

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

Ultimately, they ended up losing money.

Re:Blackjack team?

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct, I haven't been in a few years, but last time I did. They had just started shuffling after every hand making "counting" worthless.

Re:Blackjack team?

[Anonymous Coward]

Extremely difficult? Not at all. The math is simple and the betting mechanical. The only hard part about it is keeping track of the count amidst the casino distractions, also while playing the game yourself.

Re:Blackjack team?

[Dahamma]

Everything except the concealed computers - it was just a highly organized team of cart counters. So it wasn't illegal (but that doesn't mean most of them aren't banned for life from most casinos by now...)

Re:Blackjack team?

[Splab]

Yeah, go hide behind anonymous - keeping the count is hard, even with a single deck most people will get it wrong. At a casino you are counting 6 decks for this to work (single deck BJ will be reshuffled after each play) - A good dealer will have laid out 6 boxes in less than 6 seconds, thats 13 potential changes to your count, adding is easy, subtracting is hard - unless you practices rigorously like the MIT team even without the distractions you will get the count wrong.

Go try with just two decks, remember, if you get it slightly wrong you will lose.

Re:Blackjack team?

[retchdog]

so i guess i shouldn't teach my (rhetorical) child about what i've learned in life. i mean, since he didn't take the risks i did, it would be unethical.

what a bunch of hooey. what's unethical about freedom of association?

Re:Blackjack team?

[ItsJustAPseudonym]

Would it change your opinion to know that they all shared the same pot of money?

The reason they had someone else walk up and bet, was to throw off suspicion of card-counting (which you said you support).

Re:Blackjack team?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your understanding of the mechanics of blackjack team play is correct, however, the *reason* this is done is to avoid the appearance of counting cards, which will get you quickly escorted out. Or, as in Atlantic City, where counting is legal, the casino can deploy a number of punitive measures to make life difficult for the counter.

I also think you're very wrong about the ethics of the situation. The team, in fact, has assumed risk in aggregate.

"But gambling itself is a immoral enterprise that involves fooling fools for profit."

My, aren't we obnoxious. God forbid someone would want to do something they enjoy and accept the statistical edge of the house as the fee they pay for the activity. Additionally, there are- believe it or not- games in the casino that have an edge that favors *the player*. Google "full pay video poker" if you don't believe me.

But you probably won't, because clearly you enjoy forming opinions about topics you obviously don't understand.

Re:Blackjack team?

[TheLink]

That's why some smart and amoral people go into stuff like investment banking instead:
1) The betting limits are much higher.
2) You generally don't have to deal with "Guido" and his very persuasive friends...
3) You are usually playing with other people's money.
4) When you win big, you win big.
5) When you lose big, you get a bail out, bonus for past performance. Then you go on a nice holiday and come back and do it all over again.

And when you bring the house down, you really bring it down :).

Re:Blackjack team?

[Anonymous Coward]

Additionally, there are- believe it or not- games in the casino that have an edge that favors *the player*.

hahahahahahaha, good one!

Re:Blackjack team?

[bws111]

Why is running a casino any more 'immoral' than any other form of entertainment? I could spend money on movies, going to a club, going to the theater, going skydiving, attending a concert, or going to a casino. Someone is going to make profit off each one of them, and (except for gambling) I am guaranteed to come away from each one of them with nothing but memories.

Your use of the term 'fools' is just snobbery. I know many people who enjoy gambling (I myself do not), including my wife. I would not call any one of them a fool. None of them actually expect to come home with more money than they went with, but it does happen sometimes. All of them just see gambling as an enjoyable way to spend a day.

Re:Blackjack team?

[Belial6]

Exactly, at a casino, you SPEND money. It's just that every once in a while they give you some back to take home.

I keep track of every dollar I spend in casinos. The amount of money I have spent in casinos is a small fraction of what I have spent in movie theaters, and I have spent a lot less time in theaters.

Re:Blackjack team?

[thermowax]

Actually, I posted AC accidentally. Oops.

Yes, the dealer can pound out cards fast, but if you're at 5th base there's plenty of time to count while the other bozos consult their tea leaves or strategy cards to figure out what to do.

Um... I *have* done it and *do* do it. Actually, the hardest part now is finding a game with good enough rules that you can get a positive expectation while counting. Most of the corporate casinos are running CSMs, naturals pay 6:5, no double after split, and other annoying crap that increases the house edge to the point of absurdity. Personally, I practice maybe 10 minutes a day. I find that's enough to keep it more or less automatic. If I have to think about it, it becomes too much like work. ProTip: Hoyle Casino (I use a custom driller I wrote, but for anyone wanting to mess with counting) will track the hi-lo count so you can check yourself.

Which brings us to your final point: "if you get it slightly wrong you will lose". Bullshit. I count hi-lo- other schemes may be different- but It depends on how large the house edge is to start with. If you're counting against a low-edge game there is a margin of error before you move into negative expectation territory.

Re:Blackjack team?

[thermowax]

With the wealth of information available at your fingertips, you really should have done some research before posting that. I even told you what to look for.

I'm quite serious- and I'm right. You have to read the pay tables and find a video poker terminal that has been configured for positive expectation. Why the casinos do this I have no idea, since yep, they're potentially losing money on that one- but in any decent sized casino you can usually find a couple. I suppose the likelihood of a skilled player wandering by is low enough that they don't care. After all, you still have to play the game in mathematically optimal fashion. There's certainly no shortage of idiots in casinos.

War story- I've seen- more than once- a roulette pit where half the wheels were single zero and half were double zero. Every wheel had players. (Hint: the double zero table has roughly twice the house edge of the single zero game.) I've also seen a 6:5 blackjack table next to a 3:2 table, with identical rules otherwise- both occupied. Sadly, people are, on average, not very bright.

Re:Blackjack team?

[Splab]

The whole point is to bet high when the count is in your favor (high or low depending on how you do it) - get it wrong and your money is going in at the wrong time - you are better off playing the perfect game since hi/lo counting changes the perfect game.

Just because *you* find it easy doesn't make it easy, good for you that you are as good as you say you are; millions of people try it and think they are *that* good and end up losing. CSMs are indeed popping up around here also - personally I never play tables with CSM since I don't trust those things; but Fridays and Saturdays at the local casino still provides games with manually shuffled 6 deck shoes (never seen the other versions you are talking about, I would personally stay way clear of those).

Re:Blackjack team?

[Anonymous Coward]

> person making low bets counted the cards and then called in a high roller when they knew the deck was stacked

Except the only reason to have the high roller accomplice is because the casino will through you out if you're winning at counting cards, even though its legal. This did not reduce the risk and doubled the man-power required, halving the profits.

There was nothing illegal and there is nothing immoral about using the same tactics Casinos use against them.

Re:Blackjack team?

[thermowax]

You've never seen those rules? Where do you play? They're all over the place in Vegas and Atlantic City. I've also seen games where you could only double on 7, 8, and 9, no resplits, all kinds of stuff. Wizardofodds.com has a table with all those stupid rules and their impact on the house edge. Interesting reading. And don't just mistrust the CSMs, they help the house too- since there's always the same (many) number of cards in play naturals are less likely. Bastards.

But people still play them... Oddly, I've found- especially in Vegas- that the higher end casinos have the worst rules. You'll almost always find the best rules in the dumpy little off-strip places. Hmm, Fremont St. is calling to me...

Re:Blackjack team?

[AK Marc]

Why is running a casino any more 'immoral' than any other form of entertainment?

Because of the tendency of people to become addicted to it.

Re:Blackjack team?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is extremely difficult to get right, which is why a lot of casinos actually encourage you to do it

It's not particularly mentally challenging, it just takes motivation, discipline, and time. Casinos know that the vast majority of people come to casinos to have fun. Gambling is about getting something for nothing. Card counting is work, so most people just don't have the motivation to do the work required.

The local casinos even gives you a booklet which explains the perfect game

That's called "basic strategy". If you only practice basic strategy you'll lose. To gain a statistical edge you have to count cards. My guess is casinos give out these booklets to help neophytes play the game, and to make it look like they're really trying to help the player.

Re:Blackjack team?

[The End Of Days]

What I want to know is who's gonna save me from people like you who want to save me from myself?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but fuck right off. The only life you should be running is your own.

Re:Blackjack team?

[AK Marc]

I never stated anything about trying to save anyone from themselves. Perhaps you need some marijuana to help you chill out. Oh wait, pricks like you keep voting to keep it illegal.

Re:Blackjack team?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Canada, 100% of the winnings are yours to keep, no IRS, NO Income Tax, No Provincial Tax, nada.

Only if your major occupation was other than Blackjack player. That means, being a student, or an employee, or a job-hunter.

Re:Blackjack team?

[Lord Kestrel]

The best rules are always off strip, because they need to attract customers. Things like max ratio bet on craps changes wildly depending upon strip/off-strip, and even between places on-strip like MGM vs Belaggio.

Re:Blackjack team?

[danlip]

If I had to guess, I would say the GP poster is definitely not one of the people who votes for it to be illegal. Given the sentiment he expressed, it's strange you would think otherwise.

Re:Blackjack team?

[AK Marc]

He asserted my position to be the opposite of what it is, so I figured I'd do the same to him. If he doesn't like it, he shouldn't do it to others first.

Re:Blackjack team?

[smithmc]

Correct, I haven't been in a few years, but last time I did. They had just started shuffling after every hand making "counting" worthless.

When did they start doing this? I was there 3-4 years ago and all I saw were the regular 6-deck shoes, shuffled when the plastic cut card was reached.

GL

[OverlordQ]

The company has grown a lot in the past year and has been making a small profit—just under $400,000 after tax in 2010, on $2.7 million in revenue.

Good luck with making that billion?

Re:GL

[Unequivocal]

Depends on their business model. A company I helped start a while back went from that level of revenue to *netting* $60M/year in about 6 years, and then went public at a $500M valuation. If they are growing fast, then their business model may be a good one and it'll just be a matter of time. One hard part (of many) is hanging onto enough of the equity while you are trying to grow fast enough (ie raising capital) to get a good valuation on future investments and eventually an IPO.

Re:GL

[OverlordQ]

Yes, but:

An intriguing Boston-area tech company is going public after more than 10 years

They've already been going a decade.

Re:GL

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry. He's is rich. The company's small profit of $400,000 will be around $230,000 after the new tax laws kick in (keeping all else the same). After all, we wouldn't want to encourage private business in the US.

Re:GL

[tibit]

That's some BS. My residual tax rate has never been so low back in Europe as it is here in the U.S. After central/western European taxation, even Massachusets seems like a tax haven.

Re:GL

[Unequivocal]

Took us 6 years to make our first dollar, and then we had the six years I was referring to above.

Slashvertisement

[oldhack]

See subject.

Re:Slashvertisement

[Monkey-Man2000]

See subject.

Agreed, this is pretty shameless /.

Should have a seperate category

[papasui]

for these articles that nothing more than paid publicity.

Re:Should have a seperate category

[ortholattice]

for these articles that nothing more than paid publicity.

Well, it seems to be working. The stock price has increased from 0.25 to 7.50 in the last 5 hours. So already the company is worth 30 times more than it was earlier today. At that rate, they will be billionaires in no time.

Speaking of publicity, how is www.xipher.net working out for ya?

Re:Should have a seperate category

[Yvanhoe]

Now smart people start selling

Re:Should have a seperate category

[ortholattice]

Now smart people start selling

You may be right. The company has 13.4 million shares outstanding, making the current market capitalization $106 million (at the $7.90 per share current price), vs. $3.3 million this morning (at $0.25 per share, which I think was quite reasonable). A little pricey for a company with $2.7 million sales and $400k income. The investor has to gamble on significant future growth to justify the price/sales ratio of 40. By comparison, AAPL p/s is 3.7 and GOOG is 5.6.

Boring?

[JaredOfEuropa]

Some of those "10 boring Boston area" companies sound pretty interesting to me, with a revenue model based on creating services valuable enough for people to pay for them. Facebook? Now there's boring for you, yet another company luring eyeballs, selling adspace, and fencing data to marketeers. They just happened to be the right thing at the right time to get those eyeballs.

Re:Boring?

[vlm]

Some of those "10 boring Boston area" companies sound pretty interesting to me, with a revenue model based on creating services valuable enough for people to pay for them.

From the article:

SMTP currently employs 31 people, most of them in Ukraine; four are based in Cambridge.

If the only American is the CEO, and maybe his secretary, the janitor, and a fourth person, I'm not thinking it's a "Boston area" company. Toyota has a better argument at being a local company, as they surely employee more locals at the dealership. My local McDonalds employs probably 30 people, admittedly all illegal aliens, does that make them a local area company?

Re:Boring?

[Anonymous Coward]

McDonalds isnt paying anyone under the table illegally, and you know it.

You say "illegal alien" because you dont have the balls or honesty to say "spic" or "nigger", which is what you (and everyone else) really means when you spout that tripe. Admit you're simply afraid of brown people, because Fox News told you to be, you shit eating bigot.

Re:Boring?

[The End Of Days]

Hah. Good call.

Re:Boring?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you go jack off to goatse, troll?

SMTP has been public a long time

[h4rr4r]

The public has been using Simple Mail Transfer Protocol a long time already.

Does anyone know...

[Anonymous Coward]

...what SMTP actually does? Obviously, they do something involved with email, but I'm not sure what.

Plus, an email company mostly based out of Ukraine? I understand that this company might be legit, but it seems more than a little bit suspect.

Re:Does anyone know...

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Look at their website. It's a company that helps you send mass e-mails while circumventing spam filters. Awesome. I'm so excited about this interesting opportunity to send "e-mail blasts" to everyone who's ever been foolish enough to leave an address with me, I just wish they had an hour and a half long "webcast" I could watch.

Thanks Slashdot! Without you, I never would have guessed that a former casino scammer (not that there's anything wrong with that) would look to make his next fortune in the spam, er, electronic campaign management business!

Re:Does anyone know...

[$RANDOMLUSER]

It's a company that helps you send mass e-mails while circumventing spam filters.

Yeah, well, not to worry. My new company "TCP/IP", is gonna cut off their air supply.

Re:Does anyone know...

[Splab]

The world is bigger than you; some people actually like to get useful targeted information.

Personally I'd love for the local supermarket and hardware stores to send me mails when products relevant to what I want is on sale. Targeted mass mailing is big business and a huge part of that is knowing how to play nice so you don't get hit by spam assassin et. al.

Re:Does anyone know...

[Anonymous Coward]

I that's what they do, maybe the story should have a "install NoScript first" warning next to any links to them.

Re:Does anyone know...

[Compaqt]

Oh, yeah?

Well, my new company, "UDP" is going to let people send messages when you don't want to get a reply.

Re:Does anyone know...

[obarel]

Just send your business proposal to my new company, "/dev/null".

Re:Does anyone know...

[Nyder]

Look at their website. It's a company that helps you send mass e-mails while circumventing spam filters. Awesome. I'm so excited about this interesting opportunity to send "e-mail blasts" to everyone who's ever been foolish enough to leave an address with me, I just wish they had an hour and a half long "webcast" I could watch.

Thanks Slashdot! Without you, I never would have guessed that a former casino scammer (not that there's anything wrong with that) would look to make his next fortune in the spam, er, electronic campaign management business!

hmm, a scammer turns spammer.

Here here with bin laden dead, I thought the world was a better place.

Re:Does anyone know...

[QuoteMstr]

Isn't above-board bulk email sending Constant Contact's market? What does this company plan to do that would distinguish them from CC, which by all accounts is efficient and responsible?

Re:Does anyone know...

[Lost Race]

They have a name cunningly designed to generate exploitable confusion in PHBs.

PHB: Have you heard of SMTP?

Engineer: Yes, of course.

PHB: Should we use it?

Engineer: We already do. Everybody does.

PHB: Ah, I see. Well, I'll get the new sales/support contracts signed and add it to the budget then.

Engineer: ???

Re:Does anyone know...

[GlennC]

^^ This...wishing I had mod points.

Re:Does anyone know...

[19thNervousBreakdown]

And some people love a good hard cock up the ass, are you suggesting I have the right to go assfuck everyone in the world because some people like it?

Re:Does anyone know...

[Compaqt]

I'll have my business consultants "/dev/random" get right on it, without waiting for anything else.

Re:Does anyone know...

[mattack2]

Several supermarkets already send me weekly mailings, though it's not always "products relevant to what I want is [sic] on sale."

However, there is anyleaf.com, which currently is only in the SF Bay Area. You sign up for it, and you can say 'not interested' to various items/categories of items, then what's left is the current deals (e.g. in the weekly paper ads) for supermarkets & a few other places like CVS. I've still got some more to mark not interested, but it is definitely narrowing down to mostly the things for which I check the weekly ads.

(I have no connection to anyleaf, except as a user.)

Re:Does anyone know...

[sysrammer]

lol, I remember thinking the same thing when MS & Sybase named their db product SQL. Brillant markenting!

sr

+696% so far?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.google.com/finance?q=smtp

What's the biggest first day IPO gain ever? Those MIT guys know WTF.

Re:+696% so far?

[teknopurge]

Their market cap right now is $50k - I have more in my 401k.....

Good business plan... for 1990

[93 Escort Wagon]

Too bad there are already entrenched, competent SMTP servers - many of them free! Why do we even care about this guy?

Oh, yeah, that's right - MIT Blackjack team. Yeah that's what I make my business decisions on... whether the company founder knows how to play cards.

There is a typo in the summary

[W1sdOm_tOOth]

Not SMTP, but SMTP.com company

Re:There is a typo in the summary

[W1sdOm_tOOth]

Not a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol; but a SMTP.com – a shitty little company indeed.
Good luck with it!

Great Investment

[NotAGoodNickname]

A thinly traded OTC stock of a Spam circumvention company from the Ukraine. What could possibly go wrong?

Beyond Sendmail

[NicknamesAreStupid]

It would be nice to have a free, open source, secure email server that could prevent spam, verify senders, validate content, and still not break the existing SMTP network. I know that sounds utopian. Just because I don't know how to do it, it doesn't mean somebody might find not a way. There is certainly a market opportunity.

It's funny cause it's true.

[StikyPad]

Get it? You might not want to bet against him? Because he was a card shark?

Re:It's funny cause it's true.

[mcmonkey]

Get it? You might not want to bet against him? Because he was a card shark?

The term is "card sharp"

Re:It's funny cause it's true.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Card sharp" and "card shark" are synonymous,although American English is somewhat, but informally, beginning to favor "shark" as a positive term versus "sharp" as a negative one. (However, not even all American dictionaries agree with this, and some suggest the opposite.)

From Wikipedia

Re:It's funny cause it's true.

[mattack2]

Though, reading the wikipedia entry (which has citations), both have been in use for many centuries. There's even a painting from a guy who died in the 1650s that's called "The Cardsharks". (Though that may be a latter English name given to it?)

Re:It's funny cause it's true.

[Anonymous Coward]

The term is "card sharp"

Nope. Both terms are perfectly acceptable, though "sharp" came first. Language, as you may be aware, is a fluid changing thing. Shark is actually more prevalent than sharp, and in fact wins handily in a google fight.

Re:It's funny cause it's true.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's difficult to know the point at which enough people get something wrong that the incorrect usage becomes common enough that it is now actually correct. Damn you, linguistic evolution! I had to give up the fight on the proper spelling of "barbecue" a few years ago. :)

Re:SMTP Is ALREADY Public +4, Informative

[iknowcss]

I think you mean SMTP Mail Transfer Protocol

Blackjack?

[Morose]

I'm not sure SMTP would work all that well over port 21 competing with all that FTP traffic...

Re:SMTP Is ALREADY Public +4, Informative

[W1sdOm_tOOth]

I think you mean Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (without SMTP)

We like Spam now?!

[miffo.swe]

SMTP is more or less a whitehat spam operation. /. says -"yay spam!" ?

SMTP trademark?

[Compaqt]

The guy seems well-meaning, I guess, but does anybody else object to the trademarking of a common acronym?

Same with FTP Software.

The fact is corps have a mind of their own. Are we going to see suits demanding people stop calling their email servers "SMTP servers"?

Re:SMTP trademark?

[pspahn]

Well what if your name was Frank Tanner Parsons and you wanted to use your initials for your company name? I know I'd be pretty pissed off if someone told me I couldn't trademark a logo of my initials.

Re:SMTP trademark?

[pjt33]

My initial reaction was that he clearly didn't care about people being able to Google for his company.

Re:SMTP trademark?

[retchdog]

too bad. you want a government-enforced monopoly, you have to play by the quite reasonable rules, and it's just a sad coincidence about your name. what's with corporate entitlement these days?

Re:SMTP trademark?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree.

Signed,
Simon Lars Alfred Solomon Henry Doug Oleg Terwilliger

Re:SMTP trademark?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The guy seems well-meaning, I guess"

What? Bull. No one hijacks a common but obscure name like SMTP without intending to get rich off of other's backs.

Re:SMTP trademark?

[Xtifr]

I know I'd be pretty pissed off if someone told me I couldn't trademark a logo of my initials.

Really? Even if your name was Ian Bradley Moore or Allan Thomas Thatcher? Charles Ivan Anderson? Nathaniel Beauregard Correlli? Belinda Bryce Cavendish? Daniel David Tennant? Diana Nancy Alcott? Heck, if your name happened to be P. S. Pahn, I bet Sony might have something to say about you trademarking your initials.

Re:SMTP trademark?

[pspahn]

Yeah, fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on perspective) my initials are pretty unique. That's what an extra middle name gets you.

Re:SMTP Is ALREADY Public +4, Informative

[bennomatic]

So you're saying it's the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol Mail Transfer Protocol?

Re:SMTP Is ALREADY Public +4, Informative

[Provocateur]

And you don't know jack about Slashdot's moderation system.

j/k

Track record

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems he has a track record of running an uninteresting company for over 10 years that is only now starting to make modest profits.

$100,000 IPO != News

[glodime]

The From the TFA:

About two months ago, SMTP made an initial stock offering to 81 shareholders, who invested a total of $100,000

Raising $100,000 is news? At least he was smart enough not to get ripped off by investment bankers, not that they would be interested in a $100K placement.

Re:SMTP Is ALREADY Public +4, Informative

[AK Marc]

As opposed to the post he was responding to where it was Simple Mail Transfer Protocol Mail Protocol?

That's why it's so boring

[garyebickford]

Exactly, at a casino, you SPEND money. It's just that every once in a while they give you some back to take home.

The thing is, that's all you do - spend money, don't see a movie, don't get a dinner, don't receive anything. It's about as exciting as watching paint dry, generally in the company of people I would not want to meet. Then once in a while you (or somebody) you get some back. I would get more amusement out of passing money out on the street, and keeping bus money. (Actually I've read that about 1/4 people leaves Las Vegas ahead. That bit of hope keeps folks coming back.)

I used to tell people, "I don't MIND winning, but I REALLY HATE losing. It's like there is this part of my brain that thinks I should have known the answer."

Re:That's why it's so boring

[Belial6]

Well, being a bad loser would be a good reason that you don't like gambling. You also seem to lack the empathy required to understand that different people find different thing entertaining.

You are fully aware that when gambling, spending money isn't "all you do". You play a game. That is just as valid as sitting in a dark room watching pictures flicker on a screen. Personally, I find watching professional sports to be mind numbingly boring. Watching someone else play a game is certainly at least an order of magnitude more boring than playing a game yourself, yet millions of people spend HUGE amounts of money to do it. Why? Because they find it entertaining. Just because I find it mind numbing doesn't mean that it isn't entertaining to OTHER people.

Re:That's why it's so boring

[garyebickford]

I didn't mean to imply it was boring for everyone - just me! :)

I wouldn't say I'm a bad loser - I am a bit competitive but I'm also pretty empathic. And I used to somewhat enjoy nickel-dime-quarter poker with friends (but we would avoid anyone who wasn't drinking - they were there to WIN!) I've been known to lighten up on a chess game to allow the other person a chance at winning. (I haven't played in 30 years - my attention span isn't what it used to be.) But there's something particularly about gambling in general, and slots in particular - some weird part of my leetle brain really does think I should have known the answer - which slot machine to pull, or which way to go in blackjack, or which number in roulette. It doesn't make sense, but that's the way it feels. It's like I was taking a multiple choice test, and I picked the wrong answer when I knew the subject. As noted, it makes no sense, it's just my brain.

I'm not much for sports either. Or computer games - I always preferred writing games to playing them. (I've written a couple of computer games a long time ago - a 4D version of asteroids with gravity was interesting, and I recently found a line printer listing of the old BASIC code.) Oddly enough, I do sometimes like watching golf - not often, but occasionally (and for about 1/2 hour max). And I'll watch football occasionally - whatever teams are playing when I turn the TV on (and I root for whoever's losing at half time). But I can sit on a boat and watch the ocean for hours on end - always changing yet always the same. I'm sure most people would consider that a form of torture!

SMTP is a stupid name

[Anonymous Coward]

Since they can't enforce the trademark on "SMTP" since it is in common use (and even in the context of their core business) it is a pretty lame choice for the name of their company. It would be like a soda company choosing "Soda" as their name. It is totally stupid and their lawyer should have nixed the idea (if they have one.)

Re:SMTP Is ALREADY Public +4, Informative

[bennomatic]

Yes, that's correct. The humor value of a response climbs and falls along a predictable curve. There were other ways I could have phrased my response as well, but this was indeed the most effective approach.